Bologna Airport to the Ravenna Cruise Port: Rent a Car or Take the Shuttle?

Bologna keeps it simple — the airport says the rental offices are on the ground floor of the terminal, and reserved cars wait in the “Parcheggio Autonoleggi” on level 0 of the P3 Comfort car park.

No shuttle bus to a distant lot. A walk, not a ride.

Enterprise says its desk is about 30 m from the arrivals exit and opens 8 AM to 11 PM daily. Sixt runs 8 to midnight, and Maggiore, which shares the Avis and Budget counter, 8:00 to 23:59.

The other brands, Hertz and Europcar among them, are on the airport’s list without hours we could read. The hub’s desk cards have every phone number.

On those assumptions the car comes to about €48 (about US$55), roughly €15 of it fuel, before any toll or one-way fee.

Two of you on the VisitRavenna shuttle and the shared transfer pay €100 at the “from” price. Four of you pay €200 — and that’s where the car starts to look sensible.

Timing can decide it before price does — apart from a 1:30 AM run, the shuttle leaves the airport at 2 PM and 8 PM, and it stops at Ravenna station, not the ship.

A noon landing with a 4 PM all-aboard doesn’t fit that timetable — a car, or a private transfer, does.

Royal Caribbean says every port has airport transfers “at an additional fee”, booked through Air2Sea; no Ravenna price on the pages we read. Viator listed private transfers from the cruise port to Bologna airport from $153, to Venice airport from $344 and to Ravenna hotels from $83, plus Venice airport to Ravenna from $354; these are marketplace “from” prices in dollars, and they don’t say per car or per person.

Royal Caribbean’s directions from Bologna: the A14/E45 from the Tangenziale nord, then the SS309 toward Ravenna, Via delle Valli (SP112) and Viale Italia, about 1.5 hours.

Autostrade per l’Italia prices tolls per kilometre: in 2026 a car pays €0.07869 a km on plain-terrain motorway (€0.09315 in mountains), plus 22% VAT, rounded to 10 cents. With VAT that rate is about €0.096 a km, our arithmetic.

That’s a rate, not a price for this trip: Autostrade’s calculator page didn’t load for us and we don’t know the exact tolled kilometres, so no toll is in any total here.

We’d rather give you the rule — the working, not a figure we can’t stand behind.

Autostrade lists Telepass, cards, Viacard and cash at the booths, and lets you settle an unpaid toll online. Ask at the desk whether your car carries a Telepass unit — the answer decides which lane you use.

If the toll goes unpaid, the company can pass it on. The only processing fee we hold is €42.70 to process a fine, parking ticket or toll, from the 2018 Avis Budget tariff. Pay at the booth as you go, and keep the receipts.

An Avis Budget Italia tariff document puts a 16% surcharge on rentals starting at Italian airports and 12% at railway stations — but the document is dated May 2018, so we don’t calculate with it.

So the airport box in the calculator starts at 0% — you type in whatever your quote actually lists.

Hertz’s Italian terms name a “Location Service Charge” at airports and railway stations, with no amount.

The same 2018 document lists €18.85 a day for drivers 19 to 24, a collision excess of €1,000 to €2,800 by car category and €61 for an out-of-hours delivery or pickup. Treat them as the kind of charge to ask about, not today’s prices.

Italy’s standard VAT is 22%. We assume an EU rental quote shows it already, so our calculator adds none; if yours says “IVA esclusa”, add 22%.

Get the airport line, the young-driver line and the excess in writing before you pay. A quote that leaves them blank isn’t a complete quote.

Royal Caribbean’s port page rules out long-term parking at Porto Corsini, so a car driven from Bologna to the terminal has to end somewhere else.

Return it to Enterprise in Ravenna, about 5.0 miles from the ship, and you have a one-way rental plus a short transfer back out. Its hours are odd, and it takes no after-hours returns.

Keep it at Via Cura in town for €4 a day and you pay seven days of rent for a car that never moves.

Or skip the car for this leg altogether and rent later — for the days that need it, not the hour that doesn’t.

Price the one-way before you choose a car. Our one-way guide explains how brands set the fee, and the Venice page has the only Italian figures we found.

Ravenna’s tourism board also lists Forlì, Rimini, Ancona and Venice as airports for the city.

Forlì is the small one, with Ryanair flights to Cagliari and Palermo and a seasonal London Stansted route, per Wikipedia. VisitRavenna runs a shuttle from there to Ravenna station on Wednesdays and Saturdays only, €20 (about US$20).

Discover Cars showed rentals at Rimini and Forlì too, though we didn’t read their desks. Search them only if that’s where your flight lands, and check the desk hours before you book.

Decide where the car ends before you search — then compare only the results that let you leave it there.

On Oct 3, 2026, Discover Cars’ Marconi page headlined “from $14” and averaged about $37 a day. With no currency named, assume dollars and check the booking screen.

Our Discover Cars review covers deposits and the coverage add-on. Dollar amounts here use the European Central Bank rate for Oct 2, 2026, about $1.12 to the euro, and your bank will use its own.